


Impure Thoughts

by Guanin



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 19:54:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3822796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guanin/pseuds/Guanin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking inside other people's minds can be a risky business.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impure Thoughts

It wasn't like Peter had read Claude's mind on purpose. He'd never actually tried to read anyone's mind, not really. The first experience was painful enough to dissuade him and it wasn't like his powers ever worked when he wanted them to, anyway. But every once in a while, a foreign thought would slip between his own, unbidden. Some were pretty run of the mill: incessant obsessing over the water bill that still hadn’t been paid, remembering an appointment with the dermatologist, worrying whether a sister staying over had found the porn collection hidden under the bed. But a few others crossed the line, ranging from disturbing to just plain bizarre. One man was counting imaginary mice and giving each of them individual names. Another appeared to be waiting for an alien spacecraft to land in the middle of Central Park and take him away to Jupiter. At least these were harmless (though he always found himself quickening his pace), but there were some that he wanted to unlearn the second he heard them. He would have joyously lived the rest of his life without knowing his 68 year old neighbor's bathroom habits. Now he blushed and stammered whenever he saw her, making her give him concerned looks and pats on the arm, thinking that he was infected with some strange disease.

She was half-right, he supposed, although no doctor would have recommended the snarky, wisecracking invisible man he was forced to listen to as a cure. He was convinced that Claude enjoyed torturing him. His "training sessions" were designed in such a way as to exact the maximum amount of pain and discomfort possible. He wondered if Claude would still be this sadistic if Peter didn't have the power to regenerate. The memory of a two foot long steel bar piercing his sternum flashed in his mind. Most definitely. Considering the hell Claude was gleefully putting him through, Peter was owed much more than a few stray glimpses into Claude’s mind.  
Besides, Claude couldn’t complain about breach of privacy if he didn’t know about it. Not that Peter had been able to get much out of him. A few offhand curses (mainly about Peter’s supposed lack of progress, which irked him enormously), a random complaint about how Peter had nothing worth eating in his fridge, and some rather unsavory expressions about Nathan that made Peter "accidentally" bash him against the pigeon cage.

But this time there was no way that Peter could keep quiet and pretend that he hadn’t heard anything, even if he’d wanted to, which he certainly didn’t considering the shocking revelation Claude had just dropped in his lap like an early Christmas present.

Bet he's not even listening to me. At least he's got a nice arse.

He stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the crowded sidewalk, causing Claude to crash into him.

"Now what's the matter with you?" he said in that disgusted tone that always gave Peter the urge to punch him. But this time, any tendencies toward violence were firmly squashed by the shock clutching his mind, focusing all his thought on that one sentence, which flashed in his brain like a neon sign on a coke high.

"Did you just think that I have a nice ass?" His voice might sound just a little more high pitched than usual.

"What?"

He thought he detected a hint of apprehension in Claude’s voice, but he might have been imagining it, because when he turned around, Claude was staring at him with that sharp frown that always seemed to scoff the word “moron” without actually saying it. Peter ignored it.

"You think I have a nice ass."

Claude kept frowning, but a desperate, self defensive edge hovered over his expression. "No, I don't."

"Yes, you do. I just heard you."

"You heard someone else, cause it sure as hell wasn't me."

Claude brushed past him, moving so quickly that Peter had to break into a semi-run to catch up with him. He grimaced as people crashed into him, looking at the seemingly empty space before them in confusion.

"We're invisible,” he says in a low voice as he catches up to Claude. “How could it have been anyone else?"

“Maybe it was someone else thinking about some ass other than yours. You consider that possibility?”

“I heard your voice. It was you.”

“Then maybe I was staring at someone else.” Claude threw him an harsh glance. “There are lots of people around, plenty of them with very nice looking bottoms.”

“And were you also talking to this imaginary person? Because I also heard you say that I was ignoring you.”

Claude hadn’t slowed down his pace one bit during this whole exchange. If anything, he was going faster.

"You know, maybe you're starting to crack up. I think absorbing so many powers is supposed to warp the brain or something."

Peter´s hand reflexively twitched into a fist, but he quickly loosened it. He wouldn’t let Claude wriggle his way out of this.

"I heard you. You think that I have a nice ass and I want you to admit it."

Claude stopped abruptly, making both Peter and a smartly dressed businessman smack into him. The hapless businessman fell over backward on the floor with a loud “oof“, but Claude didn‘t spare him a glance.

"Petrelli,” he said slowly, drawing out each syllable, “I do not think that you have a nice arse. In fact, I don't have any sort of opinion about your arse. If you want to inflate your precious ego, you're going to have to go somewhere else. "

"If you don't think I have a nice ass, then how come you keep staring at it?"

Claude turned toward him then, anger flaring in his eyes.

"I certainly don't stare at it. I can't help it if it happens to cross my field of vision every once in a while, now can I?"

"Glancing at and staring aren't the same thing. What you do is stare."

"And on what evidence are you basing this exactly?"

"You were staring at it right now."

Claude pressed his hand against his forehead as if he’d suddenly been smacked with a thundering headache.

"Look," he said, not looking at him and Peter instantly knew that something had changed. "Perhaps in one of those probably very long instances when you stand in front of the mirror fixing that mop of yours, you might have noticed that you're a handsome guy. You may also have figured that other people might think so, too. So maybe I do like looking at your arse. Doesn’t make you less of one.”

Piercing him with a heated glare, Claude turned away, cutting through the crowd with even less care than usual, jostling people this way and that in his rush to get away from him. Peter gaped at his retreating back, his limbs frozen in place, his mind furiously trying to make sense of what he’d just heard. He had to go after Claude, had to figure out what lay at the bottom of this whole mess before it became a real disaster.

"Wait!" he shouted, but Claude didn't even pause. He was already quite a few meters distant. Soon he'd lose himself in the crowd and Peter would be adrift looking for an invisible man in a city of millions. He rushed after him, dismissing his personal rule of not bumping into people when it could be avoided. Ows and curses trailed in his wake from run over pedestrians. A dozen sorrys worried his tongue, but it’d be pointless to say them.

"Claude, stop!"

"Lesson's over, rookie!" Claude shouted over his shoulder. "Try me tomorrow. Or the month after that for all I care."

"I won't let you disappear on me."

"And you're going to stop me, are you?"

"Yes, I am."

Peter concentrated with all his might on Claude's body, willing him to stop moving. It’d worked that morning, it had to work now. It had to. But despite the throb pounding against the side of his head, Claude kept on moving, taking another step, then another, but just as he was about to turn the corner he stopped. Peter didn’t know if his telekinesis worked or if Claude halted of his own volition, but he was incredibly glad either way. His doubt was soon cleared up, for as he approached, he saw that Claude’s left leg was bent, his foot halfway off the sidewalk.

"Peter?"

Overjoyed at his success, Peter didn’t notice the dangerous undercurrent in Claude’s voice until he stepped in front of him, an action that he regretted instantly. Claude's glare could have leveled mountains, leaving nothing but molten fragments shivering in its wake.

"Let me go. Now."

Peter forced himself to meet his eyes head on. "No."

Claude glare actually increased.

"Excuse me?"

"If I let you go, you'll either punch me or shove me against the wall."

"I gotta tell you, those sound very fucking appealing right now."

"And then you wouldn't listen to me."

"What? You want to have a tête à tête in the middle of a busy sidewalk?"

That was a good point. People kept bumping into them and a few of them were beginning to stare, though they didn't know what to stare at. Besides, he didn't know for how much longer he'd be able to hold his grip on Claude. He was going to regret this. A niggling little itch in his belly told him so, but the crowd was getting thicker and pretty soon one of them was going to reach out an touch a man who shouldn’t be there.

"All right," he said and concentrated, this time on letting go instead of holding on. He felt something give way and in that instant, Claude flew at him, grabbing him by the lapels of his jacket and throwing him against the wall. Peter grimaced as his head banged against the hard cement, but the pain faded as soon as he saw Claude’s face hovering inches from his, twisted with anger and some other emotion he couldn’t identify.

"You think you’ve got me figured out, don't you? Ask a few questions, push certain key buttons and I'll open up like a Hallmark card and be a normal person? Well, it don't work that way. I don't share, I don't bond and I certainly don't appreciate amateurs taking little peeks inside my brain whenever they feel like it."

"I didn't do it on purpose. It just happened. And I'm not making fun of you, all right?"

"Really? Could have fooled me what with that little interrogation you had going earlier."

"I didn't meant it like that. I just--"

"You just what?"

"I..." Peter fished for an answer, flustered, but he couldn't find one. "I don't know."

"Well, there's a shocker."

It was Peter’s turn to glare. He’d had enough of Claude treating him like a stupid, little child.

“You know what? I don’t care if you believe me or not. I wasn’t expecting anything when I questioned you. I just wanted a little honesty for once. Maybe I was trying to get a rise out of you. Because you're always pushing me away just like you try to push away the entire world and I'm sick of it. So it surprised me to hear that, that maybe you like me for more than a punching bag."

"Don't be getting romantic notions in your head now."

"I'm not. But I won't let you hide behind petty speeches anymore.”.

He pushed at Claude with his hands and his mind, turning them around until it was Claude's back tight against the wall, his limbs locked in place by Peter's will. Savoring the consternated look on his face, Peter moved in.

"You can go on about how people are shit and that attachments hold you back, but I heard what I heard and I won't let you pretend otherwise."

He grabbed Claude's coat, pulling him forward, and kissed him hard. He moved over Claude’s mouth, then retreated abruptly when he realized that Claude wasn’t responding. Heat swelled in his cheeks. Had he misunderstood something? Claude’s words couldn’t have been more clear, yet there he stood, staring at him with an expression that actually managed to convey the thought "you’re an idiot" more firmly that words could.

"You really are an immature pup," Claude said, shaking his head.

Taking a step forward, he grabbed Peter by the shoulders and kissed him with an intensity that melted Peter’s brain within the first second. He didn’t even notice the wall pressing against his back until Claude’s hands were skimming down his sides, diving inside his shirt, stroking his bare chest. His fingers played and teased and Peter sank into his mouth, enjoying the sensations thrumming his body too much to even wonder why Claude had suddenly changed his mind. He didn’t care anymore. Maybe later, when Claude wasn’t pressing the flat of his palm against the front of his pants, squeezing until Peter couldn’t stop the moan rising in his throat.

“Now that’s what I like to hear,” Claude murmured into his ear, nibbling his earlobe.

Hands worked at his waist and the sadden shock of cold air against his groin clued Peter in to Claude’s intentions.

"What are you doing?" he panted.

Claude smiled wickedly, reaching inside Peter’s briefs. Desire spiked through his body at the tantalizing feel of his cool fingers on his cock.

"Administering today's lesson," Claude said.

And he began to stroke, hard and fast and merciless. Peter grabbed at Claude’s shoulders, biting his bottom lip to keep from crying out. This felt too good, much to good. It was like Claude knew exactly where to slow down, where to press a little further, where to linger for a teasing second. He was playing his body like a guitar string, and Peter couldn’t contain his cries any longer. A moan crept past his lips, but Claude clapped it down with a hand wrapped firmly against Peter’s mouth. At any other time, Pater might have found the act undignified and insulting, but now it only served to heighten his pleasure. Shadows flickered in and out of his vision, but all his thought was centered in his lower body as he shot into Claude’s hand, his cry escaping through Claude’s fingers. He sagged against the wall, trying to regain some measure of coherence, but his mind kept slipping. Some part of him registered Claude tucking him back in his pants and zipping him up, but all he could do was gaze blearily at the smirk dancing on the man’s lips.

“Can’t complain that I always push you away now, can you?”


End file.
